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Religious Leadership and the Pakistan Movement in the Punjab

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

David Gilmartin
David Gilmartin
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

In this paper an attempt has been made to delineate the background of the religious support for the Pakistan movement in the Punjab by looking in particular at the connections between the structure of religious leadership and the structure of Muslim politics in 20th century Punjab. Only the rough outlines of these connections have been provided, but nevertheless some important patterns have emerged. From the time of the conversion to Islam of much of the western Punjab at the hands of sufi saints, religious leadership in the rural areas was focused on the hereditary sajjada nashins of the shrines of these saints. The position of these hereditary religious leaders was tied closely into the political organization of the rural areas, and this produced a considerable unity of political and economic interests between the religious and the secular leaders of rural society. Such common interests were strengthened by the British, who, in molding a system of rural administration in the Punjab, recognized the sajjada nashins of these shrines as part of a single ruling class of hereditary rural leaders. When the Unionist Party emerged in the 1920s as a party of rural interests led by this class of rural leaders, the sajjada nashins as a group were strongly disposed, therefore, to support it and to oppose the religious attacks on the Unionists which emanated from primarily urban reformist leaders.

As a result of a widespread revival of sufi. influence in western Punjab in the post-Mughal era, however, many of the sajjada nashins in twentieth- century Punjab had also developed very strong religious commitments to spreading a deeper awareness of Islam. This revival had spread initially through the Chishti order but was later widened by the development of the Ahl-e-Sunnat-o-Jamaat group of ulama who gave religious legitimacy to the continuing emphasis on the forms of religious influence centered on the shrines. The sajjada nashins who drew on this revival tradition were not satisfied with the secular basis of the political system developed by the Unionists, but due to their structural grounding as sajjada nashins in the rural political milieu, they did not generally give the Unionists active opposition. The Unionist Party was thus able, with tacit religious support in the rural areas, to build a strong system of political authority based on rural control, and this propelled the Party to its sweeping victory in the 1937 elections.

With the emergence of the Muslim League, however, which transcended the political question of rural interests versus urban, the revivalist sajjada nashins saw the opportunity to put rural politics on a more solid religious foundation. The concept of Pakistan was seen by them in traditional terms as the establishment of a religious state, ruled by the traditional leaders of rural society but firmly based on the Shariat. In the elections of 1946 the revivalist sajjada nashins provided the vanguard of religious support for Pakistan and played an important role in carrying the Muslim League to triumph over the Unionist Party. The victory was a sweeping religious mandate for Pakistan and marked the most important step on the road to Pakistan's formation.

The important role of the sajjada nashins in the Muslim League's election victory was also an important pointer to the nature of the Pakistan state which was to emerge. Structurally, the revivalist sajjada nashins were themselves deeply rooted in rural society and their support for the Muslim League in no way represented a repudiation of the class of landed leaders who had long wielded power in western Punjab under the Unionist banner. The victory for Pakistan represented only, a call for a new religious definition of the old rural order, not for a new alignment of political power such as the reformist ulama had called for. The further definition of this system, however, remained to be developed in the new Muslim state.

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Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , July 1979 , pp. 485 - 517
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

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9 The best example of such a network of related shrines is that of the Bokhari Syeds, the descendants of Syed Jalaluddin Bokhari of Uch, whose shrines are found in several districts of southwest Punjab. For a list of the numerous surviving branches of the Bokhari Syeds in the twentieth century, see Jhang District Gazetteer, 1908, p. 58.

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12 The Ajmer Enquiry Committee suggested that the diffusion of shrines as centers of hereditary religious leadership ‘presumably… received impetus from the feudal organization …’ which was developing in India. Report of the Dargah Khwaja Saheb (Ajmer) Committee of Enquiry, p. 29.

13 Though there is not very much evidence of this, such connections were apparently established from the time of the conversion when it was generally not by popular preaching, but by contacts between the sufis and the local chiefs that much of the conversion was accomplished. This, at least, is the tradition of conversion of a number of the tribes. Rose, H. A., A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province (Patiala: Punjab Languages Dept, 1970), Vol. II, p. 412Google Scholar; Vol. III, pp. 417–18.

14 A detailed example of how such a relationship developed in the medieval Deccan sultanate of Bijapur is given in Eaton, Richard, ‘The Court and the Dargah in the Seventeenth Century Deccan,’ The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 10, No. 1 (03 1973), pp. 50–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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21 Short biographies of the saints who founded these khanqahs are given by Nizami. There is a full biography of Pir Mehr Ali Shah of Golra; Faiz, Maulana Faiz Ahmad, Mehr-e-Munir (Golra: Syed Ghulam Mohyuddin, 1973?).Google Scholar

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26 Ibid., p. 261.

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34 Under the Land Alienation Act sajjada nashins were not specifically recognized as agriculturalists, but Syeds and Qureshis, the ‘tribes’ to which most sajjada nashins belonged, were recognized as ‘agricultural tribes’ in most districts. The position of Muslim religious leaders as agriculturalist was, however, specifically discussed in the correspondence accompanying passage of the Act. Note by J. Wilson, Punjab Settlement Commissioner, 1 February 1901; Punjab Board of Revenue, File 442/1/00/4.

35 The case of the Pir of Makhad was debated in 1914. The case is in Punjab Board of Revenue, File 301/3/00/164A. Lists by district of those eventually receiving ‘landed gentry’ grants are in Punjab Board of Revenue, File 301/1176.

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37 A good example of this attitude in provided by Pir Mohammad Husain, sajjada nashin of Shergarh, who was one of the leading spokesmen for the Unionist position in the Punjab Council during the 1920s. His view of the communal problem showed no sign of a distinctive religious perspective; ‘the root cause of all the Hindu–Mohammadan disunion in the Province,’ he said, ‘is the indebtedness of the masses…’. Punjab Legislative Council Debates, Vol. VI, 1924, p. 229.Google Scholar

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42 Ibid.., pp. 355–6.

43 Note by Syed Afzal Ali Hasnie, Resident Secretary, Unionist Party to Sir Sikander, 2 February 1939, and draft letter to Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan, n.d. Unionist Party Papers, File G-21. I would like to thank Mr Nazar Hyat Khan Tiwana of Chicago for permission to use these papers.

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51 Qasuri, Maulana Maulvi Mohammad Abul Majid Khan, Pir Syed Mohammad Jamaat Ali Shah…ke Mukhtasar Qaumi Karname (Agra: Agra Akhbar Press, 1925), pp. 1–2.Google Scholar This pamphlet, which was written to defend Pir Jamaat Ali Shah, describes the controversy.

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58 CID Report of the Rawalpindi Conference, 3 September 1935. NAI, Home Political, File 5/21/35.

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68 Jinnah's and Sir Sikander's motives in forging the Pact at Lucknow in October 1937 remain the subject of considerable controversy. The best survey of the various factors involved is provided in DrIkram, S. M., Modern Muslim India and the Birth of Pakistan (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1970) pp. 237–51.Google Scholar

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70 Jinnah's attitude was exemplified when, as late as February 1943, he refused to give his sanction to an attempt by many of the urban Leaguers of Punjab to form a Muslim League Workers Board independent of the regular Unionist-dominated provincial League organization. Eastern Times (Lahore), 02 12, 1943.Google Scholar

71 Prominent in this group of young anti-Unionist and pro-League supporters were Mian Mumtaz Daultana, Nawab Iftikhar Husain Khan Mamdot, who was president of the provincial Muslim League, and Sardar Shaukat Hyat Khan, Sir Sikander's son, who was initially taken into the Ministry under Malik Khizr Hyat but who later split with the Unionists and was dismissed from the Ministry.

72 The suggestion that Jinnah may have initially miscalculated comes from Khan, Imran Ali, Punjab Politics in the Decade Before Partition (Lahore: South Asian Institute, University of the Punjab, 1975), pp. 42–3.Google Scholar

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80 Letter, Hamid Hasan Qadri to Jinnah, 22 July 1946. Punjab Vol. II, Shams-ul-Hasan Collection, Karachi. I would like to thank Khalid S. Hasan for permission to use this collection.

81 Letter, Jamaat Ali Shah to Jinnah, n.d. (July 1946?). Punjab Vol. II, Shams-ul-Hasan Collection, Karachi.

82 The importance of local religious ties between these pirs and their politically prominent followers should not, in explaining their support for Pakistan, be interpreted in too narrow a sense. By and large, it was not direct economic and political pressure from their followers so much as a more general concern for the shape of the new political system which pushed them toward support of the Muslim League. The Pir of Sial, for example, was one of the first revival pirs to actively enter the political field in support of the Muslim League, in spite of the fact that among his more wealthy murids were many of the Shahpur Tiwanas, who remained Unionists. Direct economic pressure from these local magnates is difficult to observe and seems in the emotionally charged religious atmosphere of 1945 and 1946 to have had little effect on the Pir's stance. One of the bigger Tiwana landlords, Nawab Allah Bakhsh, for example, continued to have a close religious relationship with the Pir of Sial in spite of their sharp political opposition, and before his death in 1948, the Nawab sought to dedicate 15 squares of his land in waqf as a family graveyard with the Pir of Sial as mutawalli.

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85 Ihsan (Lahore), 01 29, 1946. Reproduced in Punjab Gazette, Part III (September 13, 1946), p. 861.Google Scholar

86 Poster, ‘Ulama aur Mashaikh-e-Islam se Appeal,’ n.d. Mian Abdul Aziz Collection, Lahore. I would like to thank the family of the late Mian Abdul Aziz for permission to use this collection.

87 Eastern Times (Lahore), 09 6, 1945.Google Scholar

88 Rivalry between these two families had been going on in the Multan Municipal Committee and in the District Board for decades. In 1945 and 1946, the competing Muslim League and Unionist parties in the district were often referred to as the Gilani party and the Qureshi party. See, for example, personal file of Abdus Sattar Shah, Unionist worker, Multan; Unionist Party Papers.

89 Letter, Bashir Husain, Jhelum District Organizer, to Mian Sultan Ali Ranjha, Zamindara League (Unionist Party) Secretary, 13 December 1945. Unionist Party Papers, File D-44.

90 Jhelum District Organization Monthly Report for December 1945, 2 January 1946. Unionist Party Papers, File D-44.

91 Report of Mufti Murid Ahmad, Divisional Organizer, to headquarters, 3 February 1946. Unionist Party Papers, File E-105.

92 Report of Rawalpindi Divisional Organizer, 19 December 1945. Unionist Party Papers, File F-29.

93 Letter, Agha Barkat Ali Khan to headquarters, 8 January (February?) 1946. Unionist Party Papers, File D-59.

94 Letter, Bashir Husain to Mian Sultan Ali Ranjha, 13 December 1945. Unionist Party Papers, File D-44.

95 Telegram, Nur Mohammad to Mian Sultan Ali Ranjha, 18 January 1946. Unionist Party Papers, File D-51.

96 Letter, Mian Sultan Ali Ranjha to Nawab Allah Bakhsh Tiwana, 16 January 1946. Unionist Party Papers, File D-45.

97 Nawai Waqt (Lahore), 01 23, 1946.Google Scholar